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Brighten’s Sister-in-law | |
Author | Henry Lawson |
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Published |
1890
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Language | English |
Nationality | Australian |
Genre | Australian Literature |
1890 Short Story
Brighten’s Sister-in-law
Brighten’s Sister-in-law is an English Australian Literature short story by Australian writer Henry Lawson. It was first published in 1890.
Brighten’s Sister-in-law
by Henry Lawson
JIM was born on Gulgong, New South Wales. We used to say on Gulgongand old diggers still talked of being on th Gulgong though the goldfield there had been worked out for years, and the place was only a dusty little pastoral town in the scrubs. Gulgong was about the last of the great alluvial rushes of the roaring daysand dreary and dismal enough it looked when I was there. The expression on came from being on the diggings or goldfieldthe workings or the goldfield was all underneath, of course, so we lived (or starved) on themnot in nor at em. Mary and I had been married about two years when Jim came His name wasnt Jim, by the way, it was John Henry, after an uncle godfather; but we called him Jim from the first (and before it)because Jim was a popular Bush name, and most of my old mates were Jims. The Bush is full of good-hearted scamps called Jim.
We lived in an old weather-board shanty that had been a sly-grog-shop, and the Lord knows what else! in the palmy days of Gulgong; and I did a bit of digging (fossicking, rather), a bit of shearing, a bit of fencing, a bit of Bush-carpentering, tank-sinking,anything, just to keep the billy boiling.
We had a lot of trouble with Jim with his teeth. He was bad with every one of them, and we had most of them lanced couldnt pull him through without. I remember we got one lanced and the gum healed over before the tooth came through, and we had to get it cut again. He was a plucky little chap, and after the first time he never whimpered when the doctor was lancing his gum: he used to say tar afterwards, and want to bring the lance home with him.
The first turn we got with Jim was the worst. I had had the wife and Jim out camping with me in a tent at a dam I was making at Cattle Creek; I had two men working for me, and a boy to drive one of the tip-drays, and I took Mary out to cook for us. And it was lucky for us that the contract was finished and we got back to Gulgong, and within reach of a doctor, the day we did. We were just camping in the house, with our goods and chattels anyhow, for the night; and we were hardly back home an hour when Jim took convulsions for the first time.
Did you ever see a child in convulsions? You wouldnt want to see it again: it plays the devil with a mans nerves. Id got the beds fixed up on the floor, and the billies on the fireI was going to make some tea, and put a piece of corned beef on to boil over nightwhen Jim (hed been queer all day, and his mother was trying to hush him to sleep) Jim, he screamed out twice. Hed been crying a good deal, and I was dog-tired and worried (over some money a man owed me) or Id have noticed at once that there was something unusual in the way the child cried out: as it was I didnt turn round till Mary screamed Joe! Joe! You know how a woman cries out when her child is in danger or dyingshort, and sharp, and terrible. Joe! Look! look! Oh, my God! our child! Get the bath, quick! quick! its convulsions!
Jim was bent back like a bow, stiff as a bullock-yoke, in his mothers arms, and his eyeballs were turned up and fixeda thing I saw twice afterwards, and dont want ever to see again.
I was falling over things getting the tub and the hot water, when the woman who lived next door rushed in. She called to her husband to run for the doctor, and before the doctor came she and Mary had got Jim into a hot bath and pulled him through.
The neighbour woman made me up a shake-down in another room, and stayed with Mary that night; but it was a long while before I got Jim and Marys screams out of my head and fell asleep.
You may depend I kept the fire in, and a bucket of water hot over it, for a good many nights after that; but (it always happens like this) there came a night, when the fright had worn off, when I was too tired to bother about the fire, and that night Jim took us by surprise. Our wood-heap was done, and I broke up a new chair to get a fire, and had to run a quarter of a mile for water; but this turn wasnt so bad as the first, and we pulled him through.
You never saw a child in convulsions? Well, you dont want to. It must be only a matter of seconds, but it seems long minutes; and half an hour afterwards the child might be laughing and playing with you, or stretched out dead. It shook me up a lot. I was always pretty high-strung and sensitive. After Jim took the first fit, every time he cried, or turned over, or stretched out in the night, Id jump: I was always feeling his forehead in the dark to see if he was feverish, or feeling his limbs to see if he was limp yet. Mary and I often laughed about itafterwards. I tried sleeping in another room, but for nights after Jims first attack Id be just dozing off into a sound sleep, when Id hear him scream, as plain as could be, and Id hear Mary cry, Joe!Joe!short, sharp, and terrible and Id be up and into their room like a shot, only to find them sleeping peacefully. Then Id feel Jims head and his breathing for signs of convulsions, see to the fire and water, and go back to bed and try to sleep. For the first few nights I was like that all night, and Id feel relieved when daylight came. Id be in first thing to see if they were all right; then Id sleep till dinner-time if it was Sunday or I had no work. But then I was run down about that time: I was worried about some money for a wool-shed I put up and never got paid for; and, besides, Id been pretty wild before I met Mary.
I was fighting hard thenstruggling for something better. Both Mary and I were born to better things, and thats what made the life so hard for us.
Jim got on all right for a while: we used to watch him well, and have his teeth lanced in time.
It used to hurt and worry me to see howjust as he was getting fat and rosy and like a natural happy child, and Id feel proud to take him out a tooth would come along, and hed get thin and white and pale and bigger-eyed and old-fashioned. Wed say, Hell be safe when he gets his eye-teeth: but he didnt get them till he was two; then, Hell be safe when he gets his two-year-old teeth: they didnt come till he was going on for three.
He was a wonderful little chapYes, I know all about parents thinking that their child is the best in the world. If your boy is small for his age, friends will say that small children make big men; that hes a very bright, intelligent child, and that its better to have a bright, intelligent child than a big, sleepy lump of fat. And if your boy is dull and sleepy, they say that the dullest boys make the cleverest men and all the rest of it. I never took any notice of that sort of clatter took it for what it was worth; but, all the same, I dont think I ever saw such a child as Jim was when he turned two. He was everybodys favourite. They spoilt him rather. I had my own ideas about bringing up a child. I reckoned Mary was too soft with Jim. Shed say, Put that (whatever it was) out of Jims reach, will you, Joe? and Id say, No! leave it there, and make him understand hes not to have it. Make him have his meals without any nonsense, and go to bed at a regular hour, Id say. Mary and I had many a breeze over Jim. Shed say that I forgot he was only a baby: but I held that a baby could be trained from the first week; and I believe I was right.
But, after all, what are you to do? Youll see a boy that was brought up strict turn out a scamp; and another that was dragged up anyhow (by the hair of the head, as the saying is) turn out well. Then, again, when a child is delicateand you might lose him any day you dont like to spank him, though he might be turning out a little fiend, as delicate children often do. Suppose you gave a child a hammering, and the same night he took convulsions, or something, and died howd you feel about it? You never know what a child is going to take, any more than you can tell what some women are going to say or do.
I was very fond of Jim, and we were great chums. Sometimes Id sit and wonder what the deuce he was thinking about, and often, the way he talked, hed make me uneasy. When he was two he wanted a pipe above all things, and Id get him a clean new clay and hed sit by my side, on the edge of the verandah, or on a log of the wood-heap, in the cool of the evening, and suck away at his pipe, and try to spit when he saw me do it. He seemed to understand that a cold empty pipe wasnt quite the thing, yet to have the sense to know that he couldnt smoke tobacco yet: he made the best he could of things. And if he broke a clay pipe he wouldnt have a new one, and thered be a row; the old one had to be mended up, somehow, with string or wire. If I got my hair cut, hed want his cut too; and it always troubled him to see me shaveas if he thought there must be something wrong somewhere, else he ought to have to be shaved too. I lathered him one day, and pretended to shave him: he sat through it as solemn as an owl, but didnt seem to appreciate itperhaps he had sense enough to know that it couldnt possibly be the real thing. He felt his face, looked very hard at the lather I scraped off, and whimpered, No blood, daddy!
I used to cut myself a good deal: I was always impatient over shaving.
Then he went in to interview his mother about it. She understood his lingo better than I did.
But I wasnt always at ease with him. Sometimes hed sit looking into the fire, with his head on one side, and Id watch him and wonder what he was thinking about (I might as well have wondered what a Chinaman was thinking about) till he seemed at least twenty years older than me: sometimes, when I moved or spoke, hed glance round just as if to see what that old fool of a dadda of his was doing now.
I used to have a fancy that there was something Eastern, or Asiatic something older than our civilisation or religion about old-fashioned children. Once I started to explain my idea to a woman I thought would understandand as it happened she had an old-fashioned child, with very slant eyes a little tartar he was too. I suppose it was the sight of him that unconsciously reminded me of my infernal theory, and set me off on it, without warning me. Anyhow, it got me mixed up in an awful row with the woman and her husbandand all their tribe. It wasnt an easy thing to explain myself out of it, and the row hasnt been fixed up yet. There were some Chinamen in the district.
I took a good-size fencing contract, the frontage of a ten-mile paddock, near Gulgong, and did well out of it. The railway had got as far as the Cudgeegong riversome twenty miles from Gulgong and two hundred from the coastand carrying was good then. I had a couple of draught-horses, that I worked in the tip-drays when I was tank-sinking, and one or two others running in the Bush. I bought a broken-down waggon cheap, tinkered it up myself christened it The Same Old Thingand started carrying from the railway terminus through Gulgong and along the bush roads and tracks that branch out fanlike through the scrubs to the one-pub towns and sheep and cattle stations out there in the howling wilderness. It wasnt much of a team. There were the two heavy horses for shafters; a stunted colt, that Id bought out of the pound for thirty shillings; a light, spring-cart horse; an old grey mare, with points like a big red-and-white Australian store bullock, and with the grit of an old washerwoman to work; and a horse that had spanked along in Cob & Co.s mail-coach in his time. I had a couple there that didnt belong to me: I worked them for the feeding of them in the dry weather. And I had all sorts of harness, that I mended and fixed up myself. It was a mixed team, but I took light stuff, got through pretty quick, and freight rates were high. So I got along.
Before this, whenever I made a few pounds Id sink a shaft somewhere, prospecting for gold; but Mary never let me rest till she talked me out of that.
I made up my mind to take on a small selection farm that an old mate of mine had fenced in and cleared, and afterwards chucked upabout thirty miles out west of Gulgong, at a place called Laheys Creek. (The places were all called Laheys Creek, or Spicers Flat, or Murphys Flat, or Ryans Crossing, or some such name round there.) I reckoned Id have a run for the horses and be able to grow a bit of feed. I always had a dread of taking Mary and the children too far away from a doctoror a good woman neighbour; but there were some people came to live on Laheys Creek, and besides, there was a young brother of Marysa young scamp (his name was Jim, too, and we called him Jimmy at first to make room for our Jimhe hated the name Jimmy or James). He came to live with uswithout askingand I thought hed find enough work at Laheys Creek to keep him out of mischief. He wasnt to be depended on muchhe thought nothing of riding off, five hundred miles or so, to have a look at the country but he was fond of Mary, and hed stay by her till I got some one else to keep her company while I was on the road. He would be a protection against sundowners or any shearers who happened to wander that way in the D.T.s after a spree. Mary had a married sister come to live at Gulgong just before we left, and nothing would suit her and her husband but we must leave little Jim with them for a month or so till we got settled down at Laheys Creek. They were newly married.
Mary was to have driven into Gulgong, in the spring-cart, at the end of the month, and taken Jim home; but when the time came she wasnt too welland, besides, the tyres of the cart were loose, and I hadnt time to get them cut, so we let Jims time run on a week or so longer, till I happened to come out through Gulgong from the river with a small load of flour for Laheys Creek way. The roads were good, the weather grandno chance of it raining, and I had a spare tarpaulin if it didI would only camp out one night; so I decided to take Jim home with me.
Jim was turning three then, and he was a cure. He was so old-fashioned that he used to frighten me sometimesId almost think that there was something supernatural about him; though, of course, I never took any notice of that rot about some children being too old-fashioned to live. Theres always the ghoulish old hag (and some not so old nor haggish either) wholl come round and shake up young parents with such croaks as, Youll never rear that childhes too bright for his age. To the devil with them! I say.
But I really thought that Jim was too intelligent for his age, and I often told Mary that he ought to be kept back, and not let talk too much to old diggers and long lanky jokers of Bushmen who rode in and hung their horses outside my place on Sunday afternoons.
I dont believe in parents talking about their own children everlastingly you get sick of hearing them; and their kids are generally little devils, and turn out larrikins as likely as not.
But, for all that, I really think that Jim, when he was three years old, was the most wonderful little chap, in every way, that I ever saw.
For the first hour or so, along the road, he was telling me all about his adventures at his aunties.
But they spoilt me too much, dad, he said, as solemn as a native bear. An besides, a boy ought to stick to his parrans!
I was taking out a cattle-pup for a drover I knew, and the pup took up a good deal of Jims time.
Sometimes hed jolt me, the way he talked; and other times Id have to turn away my head and cough, or shout at the horses, to keep from laughing outright. And once, when I was taken that way, he said
What are you jerking your shoulders and coughing, and grunting, and going on that way for, dad? Why dont you tell me something?
Tell you what, Jim?
Tell me some talk.
So I told him all the talk I could think of. And I had to brighten up, I can tell you, and not draw too much on my imagination for Jim was a terror at cross-examination when the fit took him; and he didnt think twice about telling you when he thought you were talking nonsense. Once he said
Im glad you took me home with you, dad. Youll get to know Jim.
What! I said.
Youll get to know Jim.
But dont I know you already?
No, you dont. You never has time to know Jim at home.
And, looking back, I saw that it was cruel true. I had known in my heart all along that this was the truth; but it came to me like a blow from Jim. You see, it had been a hard struggle for the last year or so; and when I was home for a day or two I was generally too busy, or too tired and worried, or full of schemes for the future, to take much notice of Jim. Mary used to speak to me about it sometimes. You never take notice of the child, shed say. You could surely find a few minutes of an evening. Whats the use of always worrying and brooding? Your brain will go with a snap some day, and, if you get over it, it will teach you a lesson. Youll be an old man, and Jim a young one, before you realise that you had a child once. Then it will be too late.
This sort of talk from Mary always bored me and made me impatient with her, because I knew it all too well. I never worried for myself only for Mary and the children. And often, as the days went by, I said to myself, Ill take more notice of Jim and give Mary more of my time, just as soon as I can see things clear ahead a bit. And the hard days went on, and the weeks, and the months, and the years Ah, well!
Mary used to say, when things would get worse, Why dont you talk to me, Joe? Why dont you tell me your thoughts, instead of shutting yourself up in yourself and broodingeating your heart out? Its hard for me: I get to think youre tired of me, and selfish. I might be cross and speak sharp to you when you are in trouble. How am I to know, if you dont tell me?
But I didnt think shed understand.
And so, getting acquainted, and chumming and dozing, with the gums closing over our heads here and there, and the ragged patches of sunlight and shade passing up, over the horses, over us, on the front of the load, over the load, and down on to the white, dusty road again Jim and I got along the lonely Bush road and over the ridges, some fifteen miles before sunset, and camped at Ryans Crossing on Sandy Creek for the night. I got the horses out and took the harness off. Jim wanted badly to help me, but I made him stay on the load; for one of the horsesa vicious, red-eyed chestnutwas a kicker: hed broken a mans leg. I got the feed-bags stretched across the shafts, and the chaff-and-corn into them; and there stood the horses all round with their rumps north, south, and west, and their heads between the shafts, munching and switching their tails. We use double shafts, you know, for horse-teamstwo pairs side by side,and prop them up, and stretch bags between them, letting the bags sag to serve as feed-boxes. I threw the spare tarpaulin over the wheels on one side, letting about half of it lie on the ground in case of damp, and so making a floor and a break-wind. I threw down bags and the blankets and possum rug against the wheel to make a camp for Jim and the cattle-pup, and got a gin-case we used for a tucker-box, the frying-pan and billy down, and made a good fire at a log close handy, and soon everything was comfortable. Ryans Crossing was a grand camp. I stood with my pipe in my mouth, my hands behind my back, and my back to the fire, and took the country in.
Reedy Creek came down along a western spur of the range: the banks here were deep and green, and the water ran clear over the granite bars, boulders, and gravel. Behind us was a dreary flat covered with those gnarled, grey-barked, dry-rotted native apple-trees (about as much like apple-trees as the native bear is like any other), and a nasty bit of sand-dusty road that I was always glad to get over in wet weather. To the left on our side of the creek were reedy marshes, with frogs croaking, and across the creek the dark box-scrub-covered ridges ended in steep sidings coming down to the creek-bank, and to the main road that skirted them, running on west up over a saddle in the ridges and on towards Dubbo. The road by Laheys Creek to a place called Cobborah branched off, through dreary apple-tree and stringy-bark flats, to the left, just beyond the crossing: all these fanlike branch tracks from the Cudgeegong were inside a big horse-shoe in the Great Western Line, and so they gave small carriers a chance, now that Cob & Co.s coaches and the big teams and vans had shifted out of the main western terminus. There were tall she-oaks all along the creek, and a clump of big ones over a deep water-hole just above the crossing. The creek oaks have rough barked trunks, like English elms, but are much taller, and higher to the branchesand the leaves are reedy; Kendel, the Australian poet, calls them the she-oak harps Aeolian. Those trees are always sigh-sigh-sighingmore of a sigh than a sough or the whoosh of gum-trees in the wind. You always hear them sighing, even when you cant feel any wind. Its the same with telegraph wires: put your head against a telegraph-post on a dead, still day, and youll hear and feel the far-away roar of the wires. But then the oaks are not connected with the distance, where there might be wind; and they dont ROAR in a gale, only sigh louder and softer according to the wind, and never seem to go above or below a certain pitch,like a big harp with all the strings the same. I used to have a theory that those creek oaks got the winds voice telephoned to them, so to speak, through the ground.
I happened to look down, and there was Jim (I thought he was on the tarpaulin, playing with the pup): he was standing close beside me with his legs wide apart, his hands behind his back, and his back to the fire.
He held his head a little on one side, and there was such an old, old, wise expression in his big brown eyesjust as if hed been a child for a hundred years or so, or as though he were listening to those oaks and understanding them in a fatherly sort of way.
Dad! he said presentlyDad! do you think Ill ever grow up to be a man?
Whwhy, Jim? I gasped.
Because I dont want to.
I couldnt think of anything against this. It made me uneasy. But I remembered I used to have a childish dread of growing up to be a man.
Jim, I said, to break the silence, do you hear what the she-oaks say?
No, I dont. Is they talking?
Yes, I said, without thinking.
What is they saying? he asked.
I took the bucket and went down to the creek for some water for tea. I thought Jim would follow with a little tin billy he had, but he didnt: when I got back to the fire he was again on the possum rug, comforting the pup. I fried some bacon and eggs that Id brought out with me. Jim sang out from the waggon
Dont cook too much, dadI mightnt be hungry.
I got the tin plates and pint-pots and things out on a clean new flour-bag, in honour of Jim, and dished up. He was leaning back on the rug looking at the pup in a listless sort of way. I reckoned he was tired out, and pulled the gin-case up close to him for a table and put his plate on it. But he only tried a mouthful or two, and then he said
I aint hungry, dad! Youll have to eat it all.
It made me uneasyI never liked to see a child of mine turn from his food. They had given him some tinned salmon in Gulgong, and I was afraid that that was upsetting him. I was always against tinned muck.
Sick, Jim? I asked.
No, dad, I aint sick; I dont know whats the matter with me.
Have some tea, sonny?
Yes, dad.
I gave him some tea, with some milk in it that Id brought in a bottle from his aunts for him. He took a sip or two and then put the pint-pot on the gin-case.
Jims tired, dad, he said.
I made him lie down while I fixed up a camp for the night. It had turned a bit chilly, so I let the big tarpaulin down all round it was made to cover a high load, the flour in the waggon didnt come above the rail, so the tarpaulin came down well on to the ground. I fixed Jim up a comfortable bed under the tail-end of the waggon: when I went to lift him in he was lying back, looking up at the stars in a half-dreamy, half-fascinated way that I didnt like. Whenever Jim was extra old-fashioned, or affectionate, there was danger.
How do you feel now, sonny?
It seemed a minute before he heard me and turned from the stars.
Jims better, dad. Then he said something like, The stars are looking at me. I thought he was half asleep. I took off his jacket and boots, and carried him in under the waggon and made him comfortable for the night.
Kiss me night-night, daddy, he said.
Id rather he hadnt asked meit was a bad sign. As I was going to the fire he called me back.
What is it, Jim?
Get me my things and the cattle-pup, please, daddy.
I was scared now. His things were some toys and rubbish hed brought from Gulgong, and I remembered, the last time he had convulsions, he took all his toys and a kitten to bed with him. And night-night and daddy were two-year-old language to Jim. Id thought hed forgotten those words he seemed to be going back.
Are you quite warm enough, Jim?
Yes, dad.
I started to walk up and downI always did this when I was extra worried.
I was frightened now about Jim, though I tried to hide the fact from myself. Presently he called me again.
What is it, Jim?
Take the blankets off me, fahverJims sick! (Theyd been teaching him to say father.)
I was scared now. I remembered a neighbour of ours had a little girl die (she swallowed a pin), and when she was going she said
Take the blankets off me, muvverIm dying.
And I couldnt get that out of my head.
I threw back a fold of the possum rug, and felt Jims head he seemed cool enough.
Where do you feel bad, sonny?
No answer for a while; then he said suddenly, but in a voice as if he were talking in his sleep
Put my boots on, please, daddy. I want to go home to muvver!
I held his hand, and comforted him for a while; then he slept in a restless, feverish sort of way.
I got the bucket I used for water for the horses and stood it over the fire; I ran to the creek with the big kerosene-tin bucket and got it full of cold water and stood it handy. I got the spade (we always carried one to dig wheels out of bogs in wet weather) and turned a corner of the tarpaulin back, dug a hole, and trod the tarpaulin down into the hole, to serve for a bath, in case of the worst. I had a tin of mustard, and meant to fight a good round for Jim, if death came along.
I stooped in under the tail-board of the waggon and felt Jim. His head was burning hot, and his skin parched and dry as a bone.
Then I lost nerve and started blundering backward and forward between the waggon and the fire, and repeating what Id heard Mary say the last time we fought for Jim: God! dont take my child! God! dont take my boy! Id never had much faith in doctors, but, my God! I wanted one then. The nearest was fifteen miles away.
I threw back my head and stared up at the branches, in desperation; andWell, I dont ask you to take much stock in this, though most old Bushmen will believe anything of the Bush by night; andNow, it might have been that I was all unstrung, or it might have been a patch of sky outlined in the gently moving branches, or the blue smoke rising up. But I saw the figure of a woman, all white, come down, down, nearly to the limbs of the trees, point on up the main road, and then float up and up and vanish, still pointing. I thought Mary was dead! Then it flashed on me
Four or five miles up the road, over the saddle, was an old shanty that had been a half-way inn before the Great Western Line got round as far as Dubbo and took the coach traffic off those old Bush roads. A man named Brighten lived there. He was a selector; did a little farming, and as much sly-grog selling as he could. He was married but it wasnt that: Id thought of them, but she was a childish, worn-out, spiritless woman, and both were pretty ratty from hardship and loneliness they werent likely to be of any use to me. But it was this: Id heard talk, among some women in Gulgong, of a sister of Brightens wife whod gone out to live with them lately: shed been a hospital matron in the city, they said; and there were yarns about her. Some said she got the sack for exposing the doctorsor carrying on with them I didnt remember which. The fact of a city woman going out to live in such a place, with such people, was enough to make talk among women in a town twenty miles away, but then there must have been something extra about her, else Bushmen wouldnt have talked and carried her name so far; and I wanted a woman out of the ordinary now. I even reasoned this way, thinking like lightning, as I knelt over Jim between the big back wheels of the waggon.
I had an old racing mare that I used as a riding hack, following the team. In a minute I had her saddled and bridled; I tied the end of a half-full chaff-bag, shook the chaff into each end and dumped it on to the pommel as a cushion or buffer for Jim; I wrapped him in a blanket, and scrambled into the saddle with him.
The next minute we were stumbling down the steep bank, clattering and splashing over the crossing, and struggling up the opposite bank to the level. The mare, as I told you, was an old racer, but broken-windedshe must have run without wind after the first half mile. She had the old racing instinct in her strong, and whenever I rode in company Id have to pull her hard else shed race the other horse or burst. She ran low fore and aft, and was the easiest horse I ever rode. She ran like wheels on rails, with a bit of a tremble now and then like a railway carriagewhen she settled down to it.
The chaff-bag had slipped off, in the creek I suppose, and I let the bridle-rein go and held Jim up to me like a baby the whole way. Let the strongest man, who isnt used to it, hold a baby in one position for five minutesand Jim was fairly heavy. But I never felt the ache in my arms that nightit must have gone before I was in a fit state of mind to feel it. And at home Id often growled about being asked to hold the baby for a few minutes. I could never brood comfortably and nurse a baby at the same time. It was a ghostly moonlight night. Theres no timber in the world so ghostly as the Australian Bush in moonlightor just about daybreak. The all-shaped patches of moonlight falling between ragged, twisted boughs; the ghostly blue-white bark of the white-box trees; a dead naked white ring-barked tree, or dead white stump starting out here and there, and the ragged patches of shade and light on the road that made anything, from the shape of a spotted bullock to a naked corpse laid out stark. Roads and tracks through the Bush made by moonlight every one seeming straighter and clearer than the real one: you have to trust to your horse then. Sometimes the naked white trunk of a red stringy-bark tree, where a sheet of bark had been taken off, would start out like a ghost from the dark Bush. And dew or frost glistening on these things, according to the season. Now and again a great grey kangaroo, that had been feeding on a green patch down by the road, would start with a thump-thump, and away up the siding.
The Bush seemed full of ghosts that nightall going my way and being left behind by the mare. Once I stopped to look at Jim: I just sat back and the mare proppedshed been a stock-horse, and was used to cutting-out. I felt Jims hands and forehead; he was in a burning fever. I bent forward, and the old mare settled down to it again. I kept saying out loudand Mary and me often laughed about it (afterwards): Hes limp yet!Jims limp yet! (the words seemed jerked out of me by sheer fright)Hes limp yet! till the mares feet took it up. Then, just when I thought she was doing her best and racing her hardest, she suddenly started forward, l